Usually when I’m lying in bed reading a magazine and my husband hollers from the living room, “Come quick!” I politely decline, because it’s probably just an old video of Neil Young singing “Southern Man” or something.

Not exactly an emergency.

Such was my reaction the other night, to my instant regret – although I would’ve missed the salient moment, anyway, by the time I padded out to the television set.

Mike appeared in the doorway to inform me about what I’d passed up.

“I’m watching a show on PBS about Walter Cronkite, and it has an interview with (the late historian/journalist) David Halberstam. Remember LBJ’s famous quote that losing Walter Cronkite meant losing public opinion? He said it to your dad.”

You’d think I would’ve known that by now.

Halberstam wrote in his 1979 book “The Powers That Be” that President Johnson – after watching Cronkite pronounce the Vietnam War unwinnable – told his press secretary (Dad), “If he had lost Walter Cronkite, he had lost Mr. Average Citizen.”

I suppose if I read important books instead of celebrity puff pieces I’d be better informed about my own heritage.

Of course, like many others, I’ve long been familiar with the anecdote. In February of 1968, Cronkite – “the most trusted man in America” – closed his report on Vietnam with a passionate appeal to The Powers That Be:

“For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer’s almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of 100, or 200, or 300,000 more American troops to the battle …

“It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”

A few weeks later, President Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election.

To a child viewing the world through her own tunnel vision, this news came as an enormous disappointment. Did LBJ consider my feelings about the matter? I loved my life in Virginia. I had no desire to leave my friends and return to Austin, where everyone spoke with the Texas accent I’d “outgrown.”

But to more mature members of society, the president’s sense of dejection telegraphed a historic turning point on several major fronts – including journalism. The psychological impact of Cronkite’s words had reverberated all the way to the White House.

As did my father, although well ahead of him, Cronkite attended the University of Texas and got his feet wet working on the campus newspaper.

Years later, the two Longhorns would become friends – a friendship utterly unshaken by Cronkite’s harsh appraisal of the war conducted by Dad’s boss.

Forever a newspaper man at heart, Dad maintained the highest regard for journalists – even when they asked hard questions. The media, he understood, were essential elements of freedom.

In return, reporters tended to respect him, too.

Times were different. Or, at least, the people involved were. A little something called “grace” existed.

Who possibly could be deemed the most trusted newscaster today?

Jon Stewart, according to a recent and very scientific Internet poll? OK, I’ll go for that.

A while back, I attended a speech Walter Cronkite gave at UCLA. Afterward, I elbowed a path to the stage and introduced myself as the daughter rabidly milking her family connections. (That’s a joke. In reality, I utterly blew those opportunities.)

“You have the Christian eyes (as in last name, not religion),” he said, the Cronkite eyes a-twinkle.

What he meant was that I have my father’s exact same face – from the squinty peepers to the slightly bulbous nose. And Dad had his mother’s exact same face, which is starting to show up in my mirror.

Enough of irrelevantly injecting myself into the biography of a great man, who was always there for us when we needed him most.

Walter Cronkite’s calm and intelligent voice united us as Americans with a common dignity, even when we disagreed. We are an honorable people, he reminded us, doing the best that we can.

Susan Christian Goulding’s column appears Saturdays. She is an award-winning writer and freelance journalist. She can be contacted by e-mail at susangoulding@aol.com.

After majoring in journalism at the University of Texas, Susan Christian Goulding got her start as a copy editor and reporter at the (late, great) Los Angeles Herald Examiner. She then worked at the (late, great) Santa Monica Outlook and the Daily Breeze as a features editor, writer and columnist. She moved to the Orange County bureau of the Los Angeles Times as a features and business writer. After that five-year stint, she worked as a correspondent for People magazine and a regular freelancer for Readers Digest while raising her two kids, Erin and Matt. During this time, she also wrote a weekly column for the Daily Breeze. Next, she gave up all possibility of free time and earned a teaching credential and masters at UCI. She taught English for four often rewarding and always challenging years in Compton, then at LMU and El Camino College. Missing journalism, Goulding circled back to her original career last year, joining the Orange County Register as a reporter covering Tustin, Seal Beach and Los Alamitos. She also enjoys her return to column writing for the newspaper's OC Home magazine.

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